Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1917 — EMPLOYS MICE TO WEAVE THREAD [ARTICLE]

EMPLOYS MICE TO WEAVE THREAD

RODENTS earn six shillings APIECE A YEAR Half-penny’s Worth of Oatmeal a Month Is Sufficient Food for Each One. ‘ '

Man has harnessed waterfalls, the tides and the winds, he has disciplined the horse, the ox and the elephant, but now he has gone a step farther, he is making the mloe do bls work for him. Aware that stores of profitable animal energy are going to waste, David Hutton, a Scotchman, taught mice to weave thread. The experiment not only has proved practicable, but highly profitable.. Mr. Hutton’s own account of his experiment follows“I had occasion to be at Perth. While inspecting the toys and trinkets that were manufactured there, my attention was attracted by a little toy house with a wheel in the gable that Was running rapidly around, Impelled by the activity of a common mouse. For one shilling I purchased the house, the mouse and the wheel. But how to apply half-ounce power (which is the weight of a mouse) to a useful purchase was the difficulty. At length the manufacture of a sewing thread seemed the most profitable.” Mr. Hutton found that an ordinary mouse would run on the average ten and one-half miles a day; he had one mouse that ran the remarkable distance of eighteen miles in that time. -He found that a half-penny’s worth of oatmeal was sufficient for thirtyfive days’ food for one mouse, which during that time ran 362 miles. Mr. Hutton kept two mice constantly engaged in the making of sewing thread for more than a year, lids thread mill was so constructed that the mouse was able to twist, and reel from 100 to 120 threads a day. To perform this task it had to run ten and one-half miles, which it did with ease every other day. According to Mr. Hutton, one of his mice, on the half-penny’s worth of oatmeal, which lasted for five weeks, made 3,350 threads, 25 inches long. Since a penny was paid to women for every hank made in the ordinary way, the mouse at that rate earned 9 pence every six weeks. After deducting the cost of food and machinery, there Was r. 'dear yearly profit from each mouse of over six shillings.